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The Coolest Stuff in the World—And Yet Everyone Hates It

In a Numberphile video, University of California, Berkeley mathematician Edward Frenkel offers his take on why so many people hate the subject he loves.

Frenkel compares how math is taught in schools to an art class where students are tasked with painting fences, and, given this, says it's no surprise that the public doesn't recognize mathematics as an "incredible archipelago of knowledge."

Mathematicians are partially to blame, Frenkel says, since they don't do enough to expose mathematical ideas to the public in an accessible way:

More mathematicians should go out and let other people in on the secret.